Harmony über alles?

Once my friend from the previous post bought a product, but the sales was one yuan short of change. My friend wanted to drop the matter and forfeit his right to the change. To avoid the sales losing face however, he is advised not to, and instead has to say that he will wait for her to come back with the change. My friend would otherwise have been considered flaunting his wealth in the face of the sales, emphasising the difference between them, and therefore making the sales feel that she lost face.

Now the interesting question here is, what ultimately is the reason why the woman feels she loses face? Where does this feeling stem from? Why does it have to be the case that when my friend doesn’t want the change this has to be interpreted as him stressing the differences between them? Isn’t there a difference between them regardless of him pointing that out? Why is so much effort invested in upholding an imaginary equality of means, when people can be equally worthy regardless of their net worth?

So what’s going on with harmony, when in this case my friend has to emulate that he cares about the social difference by acting that he is of similar means, while in the other case even though he wants to help the man pushing the cart, he has to emulate that he does not care about the difference, by not noticing the man?

This apparent paradox is solved when you aim to care more for the harmony of the system then for the well-being of the people involved. In the case of the sales, you should want your change. because it belongs to you according to the rules of the transaction. In the case of the man pushing the cart, it is his job to gather refuse, and by helping him you are directly interfering with his responsibility to fulfil his task rather than helping him to fulfil it.

Chinese conception of harmony

Over dinner, a Western friend told me that on one occasion he had tried to help a man who was pushing a cart of trash. While seeing people pushing carts of trash around Hong Kong is not an uncommon sight, it is extremely uncommon for somebody to intervene, aiding, obtruding or otherwise.  On one occasion however my friend had tried to help a man push his cart of trash up a hill, to great dissatisfaction of the man. Before long a passer-by told him in English: ‘Don’t help him! he doesn’t want to be helped’.

While for my friend it was obvious that he was lending a hand, even if only to momentarily make it easier on the man, somehow he had failed to contribute to the harmony he thought he was aware of. By helping the man it was no longer tenable for him to hold that nobody noticed that he was pushing garbage and thereby tremendously increasing the social cost for the man pushing the cart around.  Was it naive of my friend to lend a hand without noticing the social gap? Is it then not harmonious but offensive to help somebody in a lower social position than you? So far it seems that in the Chinese conception of harmony, face thrives over equality in that a society can be harmonious, while still be hierarchically differentiated.